In response to Tyler Childers’ In Your Love becoming his first single to chart on country radio, Zach Bryan took to Twitter on Jan. 9 to celebrate it. While doing so, he also took a swipe at Walker Hayes and his infamous song, Fancy Like.
In the tweet, Bryan criticized both country radio and Hayes’ song, saying “Imagine being radio (whoever the hell that is), hearing Shake the Frost and being like ‘no no let’s go with the Applebees song’”
This prompted Walker Hayes to respond by saying, “Big shout to radio for playing dat Applebees song. Zach and Tyler praying y’alls continued success.”
Fans of both artists began taking sides, either criticizing Bryan for his unnecessary swipe at Hayes or Hayes for being viewed as a cringey pop-country act.
In the past few weeks, the beef seemed to die down with both sides not tweeting or posting anything about the incident.
That all changed today when Walker Hayes teased a new song, seemingly titled Zach Bryan.
In the post’s caption, Hayes said:
“Me and my buddies were talking about the whole Zach Bryan thing. They were saying they appreciated how I responded. I confessed that they only saw my best foot forward. I had a hundred smart a** responses in the chamber that I didn’t fire off. Then we got to talking about people in general. Why we get insecure, etc. Mostly about how artists size each other up, compare, and talk trash.
It’s obviously our natural human tendency to be a little butt hurt by anyone else’s success. Then we wondered about that. Why on earth we would do that as song writers. Knowing that .0001 percent of us are actually making it in this biz. Took me 18 years to feed my kids with music and I’ll still knock something I hear on the radio cuz I didn’t write it. So, we tried our best to put it all in a Twanger. And this is what we got. I hope it makes y’all talk about stuff that matters.”
The song includes some interesting lyrics, to say the least, including “Something in the orange tells me you’re feeling green,” “Jesus didn’t die for me so I can fight with Zach Bryan” and “I’d never talk sh*t about a radio record ’cause I thought mine was better.”
Zach Bryan responded to the song on an Instagram story, saying “Hahahah, hope @walkerhayes knows I wasn’t trying to insult him even remotely. I was speaking on the terms on Childers finally getting on country radio. I compared the Applebees song to Shake the Frost. Sorry if it came off slighted, wasn’t intended to be mean towards anyone except radio.”
The song itself comes across as wildly confusing. Sonically, it sounds like your standard Walker Hayes fare with electronic percussion and uninspired vocal runs. Lyrically, it feels like a half-baked diss track while simultaneously trying desperately to come across as if he is trying to take the high road.
This results in a song that feels like it’s trying to do nothing more than profit off of the fact that Zach Bryan is one of the most popular acts in country music while Hayes is slowly starting to fade into obscurity after the popularity of Fancy Like went away.
Listen to the song here: